What happened in the days and hours leading up to a Steamship Authority ferry undocking?

Employees of the Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority were aware of certain protocol errors in the days and hours leading up to the accidental undocking of the freight vessel M/V Sankaty, in July, according to statements obtained by the Times.

In August, Steamship Authority General Manager Robert Davis said that the agency's review of the unmooring examined “equipment, procedural, and human factors,” according to a statement. "It was determined that one of the vessel’s bow lines slipped off its bollard after it was berthed for the day. Due to the weather conditions, thesecond bow line subsequently slipped off the bollard, allowing the vessel to drift from the berth. A total of five lines were securing the vessel to the berth, but the remaining lines were unable to keep the vessel in place."

Prior to the event, though, records show there was concern about bow lines being improperly secured to the dock, as well as a captain warning a crewmember that the vessel may become unmoored in the hours leading up to the incident.

The names of individuals in the documents were redacted by the Steamship Authority to ensure their privacy.

Sankaty breaks loose on July 27

At about 5 p.m. on July 27, the Sankaty broke loose from its mooring at the Woods Hole terminal in Falmouth before coming to rest two minutes later at the neighboring Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution dock. Video of the incident obtained by the Times showed numerous shoreside personnel scramble to get ahold of the loose vessel.

No one was injured during the event, no one was on board the vessel and there were no major damages to the WHOI dock or the Sankaty itself, according to Steamship officials.

One Steamship employee wrote in a statement they noticed the bow lines were “not secured properly” at 1:38 p.m. while aboard the passing M/V Nantucket, nearly three hours before the incident, the records show.

“One line had all the strain and the other had a belly,” the statement said, referring to the tendency bow lines have to sag when not properly secured to the dock.

Employees predict M/V Sankaty will break loose

Another Steamship employee, this time a captain, told another employee that the vessel would “break loose” at about 3:47 p.m., according to the documents. The captain then called the employee, whose names were both redacted, and said work could be done at the next docking.

“At 4:59, as we were all standing at the end of slip 2 discussing the load for the 5:20 p.m. … we heard a loud noise (and) we all looked at the Sankaty and everyone ran over,” the employee’s statement said. “But it was too late, the Sankaty had already broken loose.”

Video released of the incident showed the M/V Sankaty becoming unmoored and slowly drifting northward until it ran into the dock.

After the vessel began to float away, a ship can be seen crossing paths with the Sankaty as it drifted toward the other dock. People can then be seen jumping onto the vessel in an attempt to redirect and bring it safely back to its berth.

Procedural changes since implemented, says Steamship Authority

The procedural changes the Steamship Authority has implemented as a result, Davis said, have been to consider attaching six — instead of five — bowlines to docked vessels, additional verification and inspection on how taut the lines are, as well as updating the procedures on how shoreside workers put the lines over the bollards when docking vessels.

The Steamship Authority Communications Director Sean Driscoll said Tuesday in an email that "the comments we have previously made still stand."

Walker Armstrong reports on all things Cape and Islands, primarily focusing on courts, transportation and the Joint Base Cape Cod military base. Contact him at WArmstrong@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @jd__walker.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Documents from Steamship Authority show staff saw Sankaty errors